The Rise of the Black Plain

A few days later...

While the population continued to learn about the Bank of the Black Plain and invest in the future of this territory, Minos was at his army headquarters working in his office.

And just as the young Stuart did every morning when he was in this city, he was at this moment receiving the reports regarding the situation on the battlefields around the Black Plain.

As he was sitting in his armchair, one of the two people standing in front of him talked about it. 

"Young master, recently, our city troops have battled with the enemies in the northeastern part of our territory, near the area under enemy command."

"On the other hand, we had smaller conflicts going on at 15 points in our territory, most of them against the forces coming from the Kingdom of the Waves."

"But in all those battles, we managed to hold our position and stop the enemy's advance." That person said this part with a smile on his face, happy that finally, the army had stopped the enemy's advance.

The forces of the Brown family, vassals, and allies were constantly eroding the area under the control of the Black Plain Army.

And this had been going on almost continuously for eight months!

But finally, this man was reporting to Minos for the first time that they had managed to contain the enemy's advance.

It was impressive!

"Oh?" Minos said in surprise. "That's good, but don't get excited."

"The enemy probably hasn't used much of their strength recently; otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to contain their advance."

To Minos, that was logical. After all, the enemy numbers were far more significant than what Dry City could support right now.

They even had the minimum to scare the enemies to stay away from this city. But that was all.

If they genuinely wanted to stop the enemy from advancing on this territory, it would require the numbers or the levels of the current soldiers to increase by many times.

But neither of these two things was quick to achieve. Hence, Minos would not be moved by this information.

"Yes." The two soldiers agreed with him but were still satisfied with that small step.

The other then commented. "Young master, we have collected a few thousand more spatial rings since you left a few days ago."

"But more importantly, we have confirmed the death of over 15,000 enemies since that incident you caused."

"Hehe, that is indeed good news!" Minos said in satisfaction, finding those deaths far more helpful to his people than those spatial rings.

"By the way, how is the situation with our allies infiltrating the enemy forces? Are they already taking action?"

"Yes, young master."

"All three families have already been notified and are beginning to leave the Brown Kingdom safely."

The Miller, Parkinson, and Austin families already had plans for their escape to the Black Plain from the moment they allied themselves with Minos. Because of this, upon receiving this young man's recent recommendations, the high-ranking members of those organizations soon began to put their plans into practice.

In any case, it was not easy to place their families in Dry City in the middle of the war in this territory. After all, there were many counter-revolutionary troops here, troops that would not miss an opportunity to kill traitors!

So, it would not be quick nor easy to get here, and those organizations would need to make their members take long detours.

"I see..."

"It's good that they answered quickly..."

"With the escalation of the war and imminent arrival of reinforcements from the Counter-Revolutionary Statute, we cannot delay in our actions."

"So, let us combine with our allies to forge major conflicts at the most decisive time of their movements."

"I want maximum efficiency in their immigration!"

"All right, young master!" The two said in agreement, just before the door to that office was hit twice.

"Minos?" Abby asked before walking in there with a pile of paper sheets in one of her hands.

"Abby? Did something happen?"

"Check this out." She used her two hands to open that, revealing the first page of one of the two major regional newspapers.

'End of the Royal Clash!' That was written prominently on that first page.

"So, they're done, huh?" Minos said this as he frowned his eyebrows. 

After several months since the Cromwell family's first attack on House Snow, the confrontation of these two influential organizations had finally come to an end!

The war of the two great families had been quite shocking, with over 20,000 Spiritual Generals killed in the many battles that had taken place during the period.

On the other hand, 15 Spiritual Kings had died in combat or sabotage, a terrible statistic for these families.

That number might seem small compared to the Spiritual Kings of Thomas' Counter-Revolutionary Army killed in a single day of Minos' action over nine months ago.

But there was no way to compare the scale of the conflicts of Minos and Thomas and those two royal houses!

Minos and the Black Plain was an anomaly that could challenge an entire kingdom, something that had started modestly but quickly reached a frightening level!

The disagreement of those two families, on the other hand, was just something related to the demise of a mid-sized noble family and political intrigues related to ego, honor, etc.

It was simply disproportionate to compare the two conflicts!

But rebels rarely appeared in this region, which made the numbers related to the war in the Brown Kingdom out of the ordinary.

Therefore, the numbers for the conflict of the Cromwells and Snows were not at all small and showed how serious the clashes of these two royal houses had been.

But not only human losses had happened during the war of the two families. No, much of their strategic infrastructure, ships, etc., had been destroyed or damaged during this conflict.

With that, both sides had lost far more than could be measured with those numbers!

Anyway, Minos knew most of this information beforehand since he had followed the development of this conflict through the regional periodicals.

And upon reading how the conflict had ended, this young man could not help but be disappointed.

"Tsk!" He made a tongue-tied sound right after he finished reading that newspaper. "Damn them!"

Hearing that, Abby could not help but understand what made her boyfriend angry. After all, besides knowing him well, she also knew about his actions and how they had influenced this conflict.

'It's ironic...'

'You incited the conflict while in the shadows but unconsciously pushed it to end while acting openly.' Abby thought quietly.

And that had been the reason for the end of the war.

A common fear of young Stuart!

Minos had played those two organizations off against each other in hopes that they would get too busy with their conflict to pay attention to the Black Plain.

But Minos had also forced them to end that conflict given the unprecedented increase in power that he had shown in the battles around the Black Plain.

In only about eight months, he and his group had suffered to force the withdrawal of Thomas's team from the outskirts of their city. Then, rapidly, he began to press the entire Brown Kingdom practically alone!

It was true that Minos' soldiers, as well as his allies, had done a lot up to this point, something that had made it possible for him to have time to cultivate to level 52. But Minos' numbers were simply abnormal.

In this period, just acting alone, the young ruler of the Black Plain had killed more than 40 Spiritual Kings, as well as around 60,000 Spiritual Generals!

That was the equivalent to the total power of a high-level regional noble family!

And he had done such a thing all by himself, in just eight months!

For all that, those two royal families had been so frightened by the danger Minos posed that they had agreed to a truce a few weeks ago.

After that, they officially reached the end of the conflict. Both royal houses committed to dealing with their losses, with neither demanding compensation.

And reading the way this war had ended, Minos could not help but feel a particularly bitter taste in his mouth.

'Damn it!'

'Those bastards are too attached to their positions!' So, the young Stuart thought to himself, feeling sorry that these regional kings did not understand that he wanted no business with them.

All he wanted was to stay on his territory in peace. But they acted as if he was a power-seeking maniac who would invade all the kingdoms in the region without any reason.

That was genuinely unpleasant for him!

"Well, since all this has already happened, let's look at the bright side of all this..." He said right after sighing deeply. "At least they lost some of their experts in that period!"

"That's already a good thing!"